Day 1 CPT Student Facing Deportation Due to Her Own Oversight

Last week, we received an “SOS” call. One of our Day 1 CPT students who are studying at Harrisburg University was facing deportation due to her own oversight in maintaining F1 status. We are here to share this story with you, so you won’t make the same mistake and jeopardize your work and your study at Day 1 CPT universities.

Using Day 1 CPT at Harrisburg University

Jane was admitted into Harrisburg about a year ago. By the time, her OPT is over and she failed to get her hands on an H1B during the lottery, Day 1 CPT seems the best option for her to stay in America to advance her study and career. She had a background in computer science but don’t want to limit herself to being merely a coder. Therefore, she chose the MS Human-centered Interaction Design Day 1 CPT course at Harrisburg University, in hope of pivoting her career toward UX/UI direction. Meanwhile, she was interning at a small company in New York City.

Like many Day 1 CPT students, Jane chose her Day 1 CPT universities carefully. She did her research and found that Harrisburg University not only has the major that fits her interests but also has a relatively lower CPT renewing frequency. Unlike some other Day 1 CPT universities, Harrisburg only requires students to renew their CPT once per year.

For 8 months, Jane was using her CPT to gain working experience while learning new knowledge at Harrisburg, thinking that she will be having a breakthrough in her career soon enough. In the 9th month of using her CPT, Jane found a better internship opportunity with a bigger paycheck and a promise that she can stay and be a full-time employee if her internship went well. Jane was over the moon. She was so happy about this new opportunity, she told everyone about it, except her Day 1 CPT school.  It didn’t even come across her mind that this is a piece of information she must report to her Day 1 CPT university as soon as she could. In the following two months and so, Jane was overjoyed by this new job. She spent many extra hours trying to be excellent at it. She really put her heart into it and hope her colleagues and superior could see her effort and offer her the full-time position once the internship is over.

Career Change & CPT Renewal

Time passes fast before Jane can realize it; it has been almost a year since she first applied for a CPT I-20. She knew that CPT renewing is essential for F1 status maintenance. She reached out to her DSO and tried to file the CPT renewal application, only to find out that she has been working “illegally” at this new company. 

According to the regulations, not only do Day 1 CPT students need to renew their CPT according to the school’s CPT course arrangement but also each time when they switch employers. CPT I-20 contains a Day 1 CPT student’s employment information. A CPT I-20 only works when all information on it matches your real situation. If you are working for employer A while you work for employer B on paper, you can be considered visa fraud. USCIS will consider you purposefully conceiving information from them and being untruthful even though it might be just an oversight issue.  

Under this circumstance, any accredited Day 1 CPT university would have to issue you a notice to terminate your study and your CPT I-20 immediately. Even an emergency transfer to a different Day 1 CPT university might not be able to save you under such a condition.

Jane is currently consulting a lawyer to figure out her options.

DSO Might Provide Limited Help

If you run into this situation (hopefully not), the only thing we can recommend you is to talk to your DSO, sincerely asking for their understanding. This will not solve the problem, but it can buy you some extra time. Your “last day” will be “issued” by your Day 1 CPT university. If they believe you were not intentionally hiding information and this is a huge misunderstanding, they might give you some extra days (15 days would be good) to buffer.

Again, remember that maintaining your legal status is way more important than many other things you might think are “important” at the time. If you have questions regarding how to use CPT safely at any stage, you are welcome to talk to our experts. We will do our best to help.

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